Blog posts

Save the Rhino: The Importance of Image

Save the Rhino is a small charity which has a vision for all five species of rhino to thrive in the wild for future generations to enjoy. They do this by funding a variety of programmes in Africa and Asia. I have been working part time for Save the Rhino for three weeks now, totaling six days and you’d be surprised at how much you can learn in so little time.

My passion is conservation and once I had already experienced other routes of conservation, such as field work and zoo programmes, I wanted to turn towards charities. I’m lucky enough to have two supervisors which allows me to focus on two areas of charity work, these are events and corporate relationships.

St John Ambulance – First Week

Hello from sunny Bristol!

St John Ambulance (SJA) is the nation’s leading first aid charity, training over 400,000 people on life-saving first aid skills every year. SJA volunteers provide first aid cover across the country for all sorts of events, big and small, as well as working alongside the NHS in responding to 999 calls.

I have been with the organisation for over 14 years now, starting at the age of six when I joined as a ‘badger’ (the name for SJA’s youngest members). I then became a cadet at the age of 10 and I am now currently an operational first aider, helping to provide first aid treatment to thousands of members of the public at various events.

My first week at Anthony Nolan

Anthony Nolan save the lives of people with blood cancers or blood disorders by matching individuals willing to donate their blood stem cells or bone marrow to people who need lifesaving transplants.

I first got involved with Anthony Nolan through Marrow at Imperial. This is Anthony Nolan’s University Branch and we run recruitment events to sign people up to the register, fundraise and spread the word about how easy it can be to save somebodies life. Next year I will even be taking the plunge along with a whole group of nationwide marrow volunteers and jumping out of a plane to raise as much money as possible.

Future Frontiers

Since my last post, lots has happened. In fact, time has flown by and I can’t quite believe it’s my final week.

Alongside my projects, I have been helping to organise one of our coaching sessions for sixth former’s at a local law firm. Normally, we train students to be our coaches but in this unique case, we have trained lawyers. The students seem really keen and this week they were having speaking on Skype with all kinds of professional experts as part of the program; solicitors, aerospace engineers, robotics engineers, graphic designers. The program has been a real success.

Task 2: Coach Quiz 

Over the past couple of weeks I have steered away from task 1 as I awaited the decision to purchase the necessary software.

Internship at London Wetland Centre – continuation.

I am in the middle of my internship at London Wetland Centre. I have finished sampling in the field and now I am moving on to data analysis and writing my report for WWT about ladybirds at LWC. Fieldwork was quite intense, it took 9 consecutive days of sampling, interrupted by the moody weather. Still, on most of the days I managed to sample throughout the whole day, but sometimes I had to stop after 2h due to rain. I must admit that I really enjoyed fieldwork – I was outside all the time and in the very pleasant surroundings, which fully compensated the repetitiveness of the actions that I had to undertake to collect enough data.

(Unfortunate) First Week on the Job

My first week at Pure Leapfrog.

The first days were filled with the excitement of new days, people, and feelings as I was, for the first time, thrust into life as an “adult”. I have never held down a full 9-5pm job and Pure Leapfrog will be my make or break foray into life as a worker bee.

When I first walked in the startup vibe was impossible to miss. The long labyrinthine route to the little nook in Shand Street that gave way to a cavernous work-space remade underneath a working train line (Oh there goes the 4:30 train). The place is makeshift, and endearing in the way that only a place made by people can be.

Introduction to Future Frontiers

Future Frontiers is a charity which trains up undergraduates to become careers coaches for pupils in high school and sixth form. The coaches run an 8 week programme for an hour a week with the pupils and guide them towards having a clear career goal in mind. Midway through all of this the children speak to professional experts, via Skype, and ask them questions about the career they are considering. The programme has caused a great increase in academic progress for the majority of participants.

At the end of the programme the pupils and coaches produce what we call an ‘academic plan’ which outlines what the pupil has to do academically to reach their dream job in the future.

First week at the London Wetland Centre

WWT (Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust) is a conservation charity that aims to sustainably manage and protect wetlands and species associated with this particualar type of habitat, as well as educate people about the importance of wetland environment. The charity runs 9 nature reserves across the country and one of them is located in west London. What I like about LWC (London Wetland Centre) is the fact that there is such a nice nature reserve in this big city and also that WWT fantastically combines their scientific mission with being very open to the public.

First day of my internship at (LWC) started with a short induction.

Charity Insights Participants 2016!

This year, the bar for the standard of Charity Insights was raised yet again, with our applicants proposing some excellent projects. As a result, we had to make some tough decisions to get from our pool of over 40 applications to the smaller number of bursaries available. After a highly competitive process, we are very happy to announce that we will be awarding 22 Charity Insights bursaries to students this summer!

This year’s participants are:

It has been amazing to hear from all the students about the range of projects they will be undertaking this summer and, of course, their progress will be recorded right here on this blog.

Friends of the Earth – last week

And it has come to an end. A really interesting experience…

I finished the main report I was putting together for the waste campaign. This will be published on the Birmingham Friends of the Earth website in the near future and also will be used in other publications and communications of the organisation.

Along the road, I benefited from feedback and insight of other long-lasting members of the organisation; to understand the campaigning basics and specifically with relation to the waste campaign. The campaign has got more to go before achieving its goals, and of course the end success matters hugely, but I think the journey is greatly rewarding as well and something to enjoy.